


And So The Sun Sets

by Lemon Dr Pepper (sh1defier), lemon_dr_pepper



Category: Granblue Fantasy (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Blood and Violence, Broken Bones, Broken Families, But the platonic ones are equally important, Decapitation, Gen, M/M, Mild Gore, Only the relationships with a / are romantic here, Stabbing, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-21
Updated: 2019-05-21
Packaged: 2020-03-08 21:16:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18902806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sh1defier/pseuds/Lemon%20Dr%20Pepper, https://archiveofourown.org/users/lemon_dr_pepper/pseuds/lemon_dr_pepper
Summary: As the rebellion is finally quelled, Lucifer has to tie up one last loose end.





	And So The Sun Sets

**Author's Note:**

> I rewatched the prologue of What Makes The Sky Blue III and it made me sad enough to drop all my other projects and write this instead.

" _I have judged only three guilty.”_

He’s silent, but words pulse through him on every beat of his heart.  The glow of the setting sun has painted the sky red. Its usual blue is relegated to the outermost edge and has already begun to turn to fade into the dark.  Though his regenerative powers keep him from sustaining long-lasting wounds, the dull ache of pain has not left him for days. It settles in his head, full to bursting with the list of things he still has to do to clean up the mess the sky has fallen into; in his chest, empty now; in the arm with which he swings his sword.

One swing--a face like his own, no fear in his eyes even in his final moments.  Lucilius knew that he had marked himself for death from the moment the uprising was quelled, if not before it began.

The second set--the Astral councilman who helped plan the rebellion, the man who had always looked upon Lucilius’s creations with little more than disgust.  He had not expected his own death the way Lucilius had.

The third it yet to come.

 _“I’ll let you know if Sandy survived.”_  Lucifer’s words are the systole, Belial’s the diastole.  When his heart clenches he hears his own voice, and when it relaxes, Belial’s fills his every vein.  He can’t hear Sandalphon’s voice at all. It was a messenger angel who informed him that Sandalphon had declared war on him.  His rage never reached Lucifer directly. Belial had left on a promise to inform him of what he couldn’t bring himself to find, and in doing so had left Lucifer to find the truth of the rebellion’s origins instead.  What a cruel twist of fate. Michael reported later that Belial had evaded capture. Rather than send her on the hunt Lucifer redirected the efforts of all four primarchs to reconstruction while the Astrals finished the prison project.  Soon Pandaemonium, a cage spanning the length of the sky, will contain the surviving participants of the rampage. It’s the only just course of action in lieu of their crimes. The alternative would be allowing them to be killed.

Pain tears its way through him again on that thought.  The supreme primarch’s work is far from over. He sails through the empty red sky alone.  His objective: Dealing with the last of Lucilius’s ‘research’. It brings him full-circle, back to the origin point of both his patrol and his life itself.  

This laboratory was bustling with activity mere days ago, but it’s become a relic in the short time since.  He feels no presence, no life force or aura across the entirety of its campus. He drops from the sky anyway through a gap in the stone below him and lands within a familiar covered outdoor walkway.  A few yards beyond his landing point the stone is stained with thick bluish-black fluid, as if someone had poured out the contents of a hundred inkwells onto the floor. His creator’s body lies at the center of the mess, his once-white robe, hair, and skin soaked with the ichor that gave him life before the supreme primarch judged him undeserving of it.  Despite the fact that Lucifer felt no presence, kneeling at Lucilius’s side is a third man in similarly-stained clothes, though his are splattered with the red blood of angels, too.

“I knew I would find you here,” Lucifer calls to the last remaining Fallen Angel as he begins to approach him.  

Belial doesn’t look up to greet him.  His hands are absentmindedly picking at Lucilius’s robe.  “Was this meant to be bait?”

“No.  I merely suspected that your feelings would win over your desire to flee.”  Perfectly disguising his aura is one of Belial’s skills amid his repertoire as the archangel of cunning.  He chased him here on a lucky hunch.

“That’s disgustingly creative for you.  I’m almost impressed.” Belial gives a curt laugh.  “And here I didn’t even think you had it in you to kill the man who made you.  Looks like I underestimated you on a few accounts. Maybe we should’ve tried to make you a Fallen Angel after all.”

The supreme primarch doesn’t flinch.  “The Fallen Angels are no more. You’re the only one left now, Belial.”

Belial shrugs.  His voice is casual, his posture smooth and loose.  To anyone but Lucifer he would appear unfazed by the situation they’re in, but that’s only because--and Lucifer is foolish for ignoring this for so long--Belial is a born liar.

“The other primarchs have confirmed them all accounted for.  I intend to pardon the majority, as I believe them ignorant of your true intentions.”

“How sweet of you.”

“That would’ve included Sariel.”  Belial’s lip twitches. “But Sariel is dead.  We retrieved his body, but it seems his core was unsalvageable.  He perished in the uprising _you_ started.”

“Aw, that’s too bad,” he drawls with a wave of his hand.  “Better to go down fighting than to wait around and let you finish him, though.  Sarry knew what he was getting into. _C’est la vie.”_

As the two original archangels, Belial and Lucifer have always been expected to represent the best of them.  Calmness is a necessity, rationality an imperative. Being ruled by their emotions would do nothing but corrupt their judgement, but those feelings still boil just beneath their calm exteriors.  “You’re lying, Belial.”

Belial’s fingers move to brush through Lucilius’s hair.  “You think so? Why, Lucifer…” Belial laughs again, finally looking up to match his gaze.  There’s a smile on his face, but his eyes betray that Lucifer is correct. “Are you trying to manipulate me with the life of someone I care about?  Playing underhanded is what people like _me_ do.  Never the supreme primarch.”

“I want you to bear the weight of your actions.”  A hint of his own suppressed anger creeps into his voice, but Lucifer reigns it in again.

“Ohhh, I see.  That makes more sense.  I could tell your heart wasn’t in it, same as it wasn’t in killing Cilius.”

Lucifer’s brow furrows.  “I gave Lucilius a swift death.  Despite his crimes, I owed him that much.”

“That’s not what I’d call it.”  Belial’s fingers now trace the bloodied edge of the wound at Lucilius’s neck.  “Your sword cut deep, but you only managed to sever some fatal arteries and veins. Didn’t quite make it through the spinal column.”  Lucifer falters. “Oh? You didn’t know?”

“I…”  Surely he had beheaded him--Lucifer had left quickly after, but he was certain that Lucilius had died before he did.

“Maybe you should’ve looked a little closer,” Belial continues as though he knows exactly what’s on his mind.  “You slit his throat like a pig. He was gone by the time I found him, but unless you stuck around to watch, he was probably still hanging on when you abandoned him.  He must have suffered terribly in those final moments, bleeding out all by his lonesome…”

Lucifer’s stomach twists sharply.  The idea of inspecting the fatal blow he’d inflicted on his old friend had been too much to bear, and he had more work to do.  There was reason for him to flee. Now they’re both looking at that wound, though, as Belial’s fingers press against the spongy flesh and muscle still intact below his ear.  

“You would’ve made a terrible Fallen Angel, actually.  If you’re going to try to play a different role, _put a little back into it!_ ”  The blade appears so quickly that Lucifer nearly misses it, but the sound of Belial’s sword crunching through the last of Lucilius’s vertebrae shakes him to his very core.  Their creator’s head rolls away from his stiff, bloodless body. Belial remains on the ground, staring at the two pieces of the corpse with a haunting, frigid smile. It creeps up his face until his teeth are bared all the way to the gums.  There’s a soft chuckle rumbling in his chest. He lowers his head as it builds, it grows louder, until the force of its escape throws his head back and he laughs. “Hahahahaha!” Long and loudly, he laughs.

Lucifer can only watch as his old friend laughs and laughs at the misfortune that’s befallen their once comfortable home, laughing because he cannot bear to cry.  Nor can Lucifer. The aching in his chest burns, but he doesn’t even have the laughter that Belial has to express his grief.

“Hah!  Ahhh--”  His voice cracks; he’s forced to catch his breath.  He rounds on Lucifer, the whites of his eyes bulging and feral.  “Ahah… Lucifer. Lucifer, Lucifer, Lucifer, I can’t believe it, I really can’t.  Eons of research, careful planning, set-up, all wasted, all completely undone by brute strength.  I guess we got a little too excited and finished prematurely. I promise, this never happens!”

“Belial…”  The burning in his chest rises into his throat like bile.  “What did you and Lucilius have to gain from this, when you knew that you would lose so much?!”

“Slow your roll, there, Lucifer,” he tuts.  “No one wants a supreme primarch with a temper.  It’s so unbecoming.”

“How could you do something so horrific…  How could you and Lucilius betray our ideals?  Harm those you swore to protect? We were supposed to guide this world, not destroy it--would you really go so far as to rend the skies in twain?”  The reality still hasn’t fully sunk in, even though he’s already begun to enact judgement and is looking at the proof right now.

“So many questions.  I think this is the most you’ve asked about us in a couple hundred years or so.”

“Answer me!”

“You don’t have a clue?  Not even an inkling? Why would Cilius and Beli want to destroy the whole wide world, Lucy-Fur?” he teases him as though he were a child.  “Why didn’t you ask Lucilius that question? He’s much more straightforward than I am.” He hadn’t thought to--he hadn’t wanted to know the answer at the time.  “For being Lucilius’s favorite creation, you really didn’t pay him much mind.”

“How can you say that?  Of course I… We were friends.  You and I were family!”

“Oof, didn’t even try to dispute the ‘favorite’ thing.  Classic Lucifer.” Lucifer grits his teeth. “You didn’t consider how that might hurt my feelings, now, did you?  Even though you know how I feel about Cilius.”

“This isn’t the time or the place for that conversation.”

“Then when is?  You never really got around to asking me or Cilius about our feelings once you got comfortable in your supreme primarch position.  Even after all that hot air about there being ‘no meaningful differences’ between our roles.” Petty jealousy couldn’t be enough to drive Belial to such lengths, and even if it were, why would Lucilius do the same?  How little does he really know about two of his dearest friends? “You haven’t even mentioned poor Sandy, either!”

Lucifer’s blood turns to ice under Belial’s cold smile.

“Didn’t even ask me if he was still alive.  I told you I’d find out for you.”

“Where is Sandalphon?” he asks, voice hoarse.

“It’s a little too late for that conversation,” Belial taunts back.

His head is spinning, begging to wake from this nightmare, but he knows he’ll be given no such solace.

“I’ll bet you can’t figure out what made him so angry, either.  Wasn’t me, by the way,” he says, raising a bloody hand. “Resourceful little bugger saw an opportunity and jumped on it.  I’ll give you this one, though--I’m guessing it had something to do with the fact that you kept him in a pretty prison his whole life.”

“Where is Sandalphon?!”

“What, you think you’re going to get to the bottom of this now?  Let’s be honest, Lucifer--you’re just going to stick him into that cage the Astrals built and leave it at that.”  Lucifer opens his mouth to respond but his words die on his tongue and choke him. “Because that’s the fastest, easiest way to deal with him!  Just like how you killed Lucilius without a conversation. Conversations like these hurt your feelings, don’t they? You can’t stand to face your own mistakes.  You’d rather get it over with and call that ‘good enough’. That’s what you always do.”

Belial has always been the one with the silver tongue, but never before has Lucifer felt so ineloquent.  He can’t compose a coherent thought, let alone a response.

“Always has been…”  Belial begins to drag himself to his feet.  Lucifer’s eyes flash--his hand goes to his sword.  “Always will--oh?” Belial now falls into another fit of hysterical laughter and throws out his arms, depravity on his face.  “Hahaha! I guess that’s that, then! Time to finish me off too!” Lucifer is fighting so hard to restrain himself that he tastes blood from biting his tongue.  “I welcome it at this point.” Belial’s draconic wings extend from his back pair by pair by pair as he steps over Lucilius’s corpse and slogs through his thick, black blood.  “I’ll even give you a clean shot at my throat,” he says, gesturing at the bulge in his larynx. He wags a finger in Lucifer’s direction. “Don’t hesitate, now. I just might change my--!”  

Lucifer’s reflexes are faster than his conscious mind; he throws himself back and Belial’s blade leaves a scrape across the front of his armor, missing a mortal wound by the smallest fraction of a second.  

“Ooh, so close!”

He draws his own sword as three more great red blades manifest around the Fallen Angel and converge on him with hellish speed.  The clang of silvered steel against the ribbed metal bounces from floor to ceiling down the lengthy corridor. Belial’s weapons come at the supreme primarch from all sides, glancing off his blade as he dances his violent bolero between them, or otherwise narrowly missing him--or not missing at all.  A single false step and one sends a shower of feathers and blood across the floor as it cleaves through a wing. Lucifer skids back and tucks the wing into his body, gritting his teeth through the pain.

“I’ve always wanted to see those wings ripped out of you!” calls Belial as he advances on him.  “You flaunt them everywhere you go. Ever notice that the rest of the archangels keep theirs tucked away until they need them?”  

The supreme primarch cannot allow himself to become distracted by enemy taunting.  He throws all six out to span and the injured wing bursts forth with fresh feathers that seal the wound.  He kicks off into the sky, out through the hole he dropped in through. Belial is quick to follow him, but the high ground has already given Lucifer an edge.  The first blade bursts through the ceiling--Lucifer’s sword collides so fiercely against it that it shatters. The red pieces wither away into the aether from which it came.  He kicks the next at a steep angle. If he’d misjudged by even an inch he would have lost a foot, but his success propels him further into the air and alters the blade’s trajectory so that it crashes into the next.  He drops into a freefall to avoid the last, but swings around to catch its hilt and flings it back in Belial’s direction, only for the blade to explode as a beam of pink light erupts through it. Lucifer thrusts his blade before himself and cleaves through the ray as if it were viscous material.

“ _Anagenesis!_ ”

“ _Paradise Lost!_ ”  His wings illuminate the darkened sky and his own blinding rays rain down on him.  Belial darts throughout, weaving and ducking impossibly quickly despite the size and number of his wings.  One of the blades returns to his hand. It’s as big as he is, but he swings it effortlessly. Lucifer retaliates at twice his speed and catches it amid the ribs, knocking it from the Fallen Angel’s grip, and finds himself thrown off-balance when it sails away with no resistance.  Of course--Belial dropped it the moment Lucifer’s blade touched it, sleight of hand, how could Lucifer fail to recognize such an obvious feint! Belial’s fist collides with his nose with a sickening crunch. His other hand grabs Lucifer’s hair and slams his face into his knee. Instead of words he’s choking on blood now, twitching his wings agitatedly to keep himself airborne.  He raises his sword, but Belial’s hand closes around his wrist and snaps it back to a grunt of pain from Lucifer, and a second louder one when he does the same to the elbow. The sword is slipping from his traumatized fingers, but to his greater horror, his assailant’s hands have reached his wings.

“Oh, Lucifer,” Belial cackles as he claws at his feathers.  “Red’s a better color on you than white. Why don’t we make that permanent?”  Another shattered bone, then the most horrid wrenching, Belial’s foot digs into his spine as he begins to rip his wing from his shoulders.  Lucifer flails in his grip like a songbird in the talons of an owl, thrashing desperately and inelegantly to save himself as their combined weight sends them spiraling toward the ground.  The pain is becoming too much to bear--that agony devouring his heart. Broken bones and torn wings are nothing compared to grief.

With a primal scream, Lucifer throws his body into a mid-air roll, knocking Belial’s hand just loose enough to save the wing.  He summons every ounce of adrenaline in his body. His crushed arm rights itself. His grip on his sword tightens. He whips around to thrust it through Belial’s stomach.  Belial’s cackling hitches as all air leaves him. The supreme primarch pulls the blade free and swings it down, cleanly slicing through one of the Fallen Angel’s legs, and before Belial can register the injury Lucifer has his throat in his hand.  He hoists him overhead, pushing him toward the rapidly-approaching stone floor, and brings his blade straight through his ribcage, through his heart, and out the other side.

As they careen to the ground, something familiar flits into his mind.

 

> _“Ouch!  You actually stabbed me!” shrieked Belial.  He staggered away from his companion, clutching at his side as blood began to stain his crisp white clothes._
> 
> _Lucifer dropped his sword in fright and rushed after his friend.  “I’m so sorry, Belial--that was a mistake!”_
> 
> _“You call that a mistake?  Lucilius, he stabbed me!” Their creator stood nearby to watch the mock-battle unfold._
> 
> _“Please, let me see!” Lucifer begged as he grabbed for the other angel.  He managed to catch Belial’s arm, but Belial twisted out of his grip. Still, his hand lowered to the edge of his clothing._
> 
> _“You want to see?”_
> 
> _“Yes!  Please, you have my most sincere apologies--”  His plea fell short when Belial dropped his trousers and flashed him his bare behind.  Lucifer covered his face in embarrassment. “Belial...” he sighed under his friend’s raucous laughter._
> 
> _“You asked!”_
> 
> _“I meant the wound.”_
> 
> _“It's already healed.  Ow!” Belial yelped again, this time as Lucilius’s polearm whapped the naughty angel on the head.  “What was that for?”_
> 
> _“Don’t be crude towards Lucifer,” Lucilius scolded him, “or you’ll see the business end of my spear next time.”_
> 
> _Even Lucifer could recognize that opening.  Belial gasped with fake shock and clamped his hands over the other angel’s ears, though he left his grip just loose enough for Lucifer to hear them anyway.  “Cilius! You can’t just tell Lucifer what we do in the bedroom out of nowhere like that!” Lucilius, so terrible at restraining his own emotions, turned red as a sunset.  Now Lucifer was laughing along with his friend._
> 
> _“What did I just tell you?” demanded Lucilius indignantly._
> 
> _“Look, Lucifer’s laughing too!”  He was, even if it was perhaps a little inappropriate.  “Lucifer thinks my dirty jokes are hilarious. Sorry, Cilius, but I’ve already corrupted him.”  Lucifer playfully pushed him away, but didn’t deny the accusation._
> 
> _“You menace…”   Though Lucilius sighed outwardly, Lucifer could tell that his exasperation was tinged with fondness for both of his silly creations.  He was too well-spoken to have given Belial that prompt entirely by accident. On some level, he was joking along with them._

 

Belial’s wings absorbed the brunt of the impact.  They lie beneath him now, broken, and Belial beneath Lucifer in a similar state.  Lucifer holds him there with his foot and with his sword, the latter of which has pierced through chest, wings, and the ground itself.  The supreme primarch’s arms are trembling uncontrollably. Blood streams down his face, past his eyes and down his cheeks, dripping from the end of his nose and speckling Belial’s already red-stained face.  

His voice is low when he finally manages to speak again.  “It’s over, Belial.”

Belial spits his own blood back at him.  “Finish it, then.” Lucifer says nothing and does not move.  “Come on, Supreme Primarch… You’ve got a job to do. You’re judge, jury, and executioner now, aren’t you?  Objective and fair...” He takes a ragged breath that twists into a laugh. “At this rate, I’ll… I’ll regenerate before you get the chance.”

“I regenerate faster than you.”  The last of Lucifer’s bleeding wounds have just sealed.  All six wings are perfectly aligned once again.

“Then do it, Lucifer!  Kill me!” As Belial’s lungs rebuild themselves his voice wells with his fury.  “I told you I would welcome it! I want you to be the one to kill me--hah, haha,” his words slur into his laughter and his laughter into his ranting.  “Hahaha! I want to spend my last moments watching you suffer as everyone you love dies at your hands! I want to be another stain on that pure, perfect soul of yours!  Go on, then--slit my throat! Behead me and burn the stump and return to your life at the top of--”

“ _Stop it, Belial!_ ” he shouts over Belial’s rant.  He and Belial both are already aware that Lucifer won’t.

He can’t.  

Lucilius’s corpse is lying beside them, his head another foot away, miraculously unscathed from the battle that had raged above.  Sandalphon… His heart aches so much. Sandalphon likely died in torment because Lucifer was too afraid to confront him himself. His avoidance allowed the people he claimed to hold so dear to commit these atrocities, and to succumb to them.  To say that his broken heart leaves him suffering as much as his old friends would be an insult to them, another stroke of his own ego, utterly selfish, but he is hurting in a way that eclipses even the worst battle wounds he’s ever sustained and there is nothing that his powers can heal.  He wants so badly to make his feelings known, but even now he can’t bring himself to vocalize his mistakes. The supreme primarch isn’t supposed to make such mistakes. Lucifer withdraws his blade and steps away, leaving Belial bleeding on the ground by their creator. Despite his sorry state, Belial forces himself up onto his hands to watch him.

“If you continue to fight, I’ll be forced to kill you,” Lucifer says quietly.  

“Oh, don’t tell me you’re trying to act _noble_ now…” Belial spits.  “You want this to be a suicide so you can pretend it’s not your fault.”  He’s correct. For better or worse, Belial has always been well-tuned to the feelings of those around him.  Far moreso than Lucifer. “I’m not giving you that peace. You finish the job yourself.”

“If you surrender,” Lucifer continues, struggling to keep his voice steady, “I will request a stay of execution, and place your core into Pandaemonium upon its completion.”

“The old tried-and-true ‘imprison them out of love,’ the Lucifer Special.”  He’s not wrong about that, either. Lucifer never allowed himself to ponder Sandalphon's captivity for too long.  Facing that he would be better off free would have meant risking losing him to another artificial rank.  He chose his own happiness over Sandalphon's.  How abhorrent.

“If you run, Michael and the other primarchs will pursue you relentlessly.”

“Would that make you feel better?  Foisting your dirty work off onto your little toadies?”  Lucifer allows that to hang in the otherwise silent air, disturbed not even by the wind.  All the while, the hole in Belial’s chest stitches itself back together. His severed leg will take longer, but his injuries don’t stop Belial from crawling through the mixing blood and ichor until he’s reached Lucilius’s head.  He pulls the head into his lap. “I guess that is what you were designed for,” he mutters as he tilts Lucilius’s unseeing eyes up toward himself. He tenderly wipes away some of the blood from his face. “You were always meant to boss the rest of us around.  I’m the one who was made to get his hands dirty.”

“Belial…”  He has to say something--anything--to get at what he feels inside.  To leave things like this would be unbearable. “Belial, no matter what has happened or what may happen yet…”  He goes unacknowledged, but continues nonetheless. “No matter what you think of me, I will always see you as yourself.  Not as my adjutant, nor as a Fallen Angel, nor a traitor. You will always be Belial to me.”

Belial sneers.  “What’s that supposed to mean?”  

It means that for every crime Belial has committed, Lucifer feels equally responsible.  For all the suffering he has ever endured, Lucifer finds himself to blame. Lucifer ignored the distance that grew between them from the disparity between their roles, out of a hopeless longing for the days before they were assigned.  Those days spent in peace, the three of them like family, exploring the skies together and watching the world as it transformed itself around them while knowing that soon it would be their hands that guided it. Perhaps those days never existed for anyone but him.  Lucilius may have favored him from the beginning for reasons Lucifer can’t comprehend--reasons that Belial, however, had to. If he’d been more self-aware… No, if he’d removed the blinders he purposefully put on… How selfish of him to ignore such awful things to savor his own idle fantasies, then and now.  He’s disgusted with himself.

Belial watches him at length in silence, waiting for Lucifer to say any of this aloud, but once again he fails to explain.  He thinks, though, for a brief moment, that he sees a flash of recognition in Belial’s eyes. He breathes out slowly. “You’re really letting me go, aren’t you.  What selfish mercy.”

“The four primarchs will follow you to the edge of creation if that’s what it takes to find you again.”

“And you know as well as I do they never will.”

“How long do you think yourself capable of hiding your aura like this?”

“As long as I feel like staying alive.”  That’s the answer he anticipated. Lucifer believes him,  too. “Do you want proof?”

“Proof?”  He thought their years spent in each other’s company were proof enough.

Yet Belial seems intent on proving it still.  His hand closes around the lump in his throat.  “We’ve been at this song and dance for a while now and you still haven’t noticed this.”  

Lucifer fears for a moment that he’ll rip his own throat out, but his neck remains intact when he pulls away; the thing between his fingers is a small, softly pulsating orb of light.  His heart is consumed by a new wave of dread.   _No, no, not this_ , he thinks,  _anything but this --_ it can’t be what he thinks it is, but the aura is so familiar...

“Talk about an Adam’s Apple.  Imagine if you had cut my head off after all.”  Belial smirks. “You’d have sliced right through Sandy, too.  I almost got you good.”

Lucifer’s throat has run barren.  Belial turns Sandalphon’s core within his fingers, checking it like a jeweler would a gem.

“I could snuff him out right here if I really wanted to twist the knife in you.  Seeing as you killed the love of _my_ life, it’d be only fair.”  Belial cuts his eyes to Lucifer again.  “Are you ‘seeing me as I am’ now?”

He’s seeing the culmination of his years of willful ignorance.  If lives weren’t at stake, Lucifer would think it well-deserved.  There’s nothing he can do anymore--not for Belial, not for Lucilius, and now, even with Sandalphon within only a few meager steps, he is more useless to him than ever.  Belial’s laughter returns.

“The look on your face right now is priceless.  I’m the archangel of cunning, Lucifer. You have to think more than a few steps ahead of me to have a chance.  I’ve always been smarter than you.” Shaking, Lucifer takes one step in his direction. The core drops into Belial’s palm and Lucifer goes rigid again.  His racing heart is going to burst. He forgoes justice and morality--he prays to every god that he can think of, those of the skies and of the stars, to righteous creation and to destruction to have mercy.  Anyone, anything, to spare him from losing him twice. Belial’s fist threatens to clench around the delicate orb, but then he winds his arm and pitches the core in Lucifer’s direction. Lucifer narrowly catches it before it hits the ground, he himself crumpling instead.  As he clutches it tightly to his chest he hears a faint sigh and a murmur. “But I’m every bit as sentimental,” followed by the sound of leathery wings breaking the air, and by the time he looks up he only catches the last shadow of his old friend disappearing into the night.  Lucifer is left alone with the remnants of their past. A headless corpse. This precious core, a lifetime of regrets and an empty future the supreme primarch will be expected to walk into with open arms.

It was the supreme primarch who slew Lucilius, for Lucifer couldn’t hurt someone so precious to him.  It was Lucifer who allowed Belial to escape. The supreme primarch would have followed through with his execution, because to do otherwise would be objectively wrong.

Pretending to be two people is just another way for him to hide from his actions.

The weight of his wings pushes down on him, until he tilts onto his side and curls around Sandalphon’s essence, three of the wings splayed out awkwardly across the floor and the other three wrapping around them to keep out the rest of the world.  He should free him. He shouldn’t. He owes him the chance to live. He owes him his punishment, but also the chance to plead his case. He owes him the chance to take his vengeance, and if he miraculously reforms in Lucifer’s arms tonight, Lucifer will willingly die on his sword.  One more way to run away.

Michael will come for him soon.  It won’t be long before the cage is complete.  Without Lucilius or Belial, it will take the supreme primarch’s power to seal away the rebellious beasts.  Michael’s shame will prevent her from asking about Belial’s whereabouts, but she’ll ask of Sandalphon. Unlike Belial, Lucifer isn’t capable of disguising him long enough to steal away with him.  Even if he could, they have nowhere to go. Sandalphon will join the other beasts like any common criminal. Lucifer won’t try to stop it.

He may never know the truth about his loved ones’ pain--what drove Sandalphon to wish him dead, or Belial and Lucilius to wish death on so many--but he feels he must be closer now to understanding them than he has been in centuries.  At the moment, he himself hopes the sun will never rise.

**Author's Note:**

> Don't forget that as of WMTSB3 we know that Belial is having a good time. Lucilius is alive (even if he's chilling in the rainbow void). Sariel did in fact survive and is happy and healthy. Sandalphon is free and surrounded by people who love him, and Lucifer is no longer the supreme primarch and gets to spend his days in a lovely little cottage in Purgatory where Sandalphon can visit him for coffee and hugs and kisses in his dreams. And there's a good chance Lucifer will come back to life someday! Never lose hope! Lucifer may have ended on a bleak note here, but he held on. It's all gonna be okay. I'll write the happy part into existence too.


End file.
